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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22789867">arcata</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor'>owlinaminor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Adventure Zone (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Trees, sketch - freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:33:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>854</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22789867</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>“Are these trees the biggest trees in the world?”</p>
</blockquote><p>Minerva and Duck, in the Arcata Community Forest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minerva &amp; Duck Newton, Minerva/Duck Newton</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>45</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>arcata</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my girlfriend and I went to the <a href="https://twitter.com/betsyladyzhets/status/1226588276489719808">redwood forest</a> in Arcata, CA last week and I simply had to sketch something about minerva and duck among those massive trees.  this can be a sequel to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22028467">dentata</a> if you want it to be, though that is by no means required reading.</p>
<p>much of the fic's conversation is inspired by what i remember of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Trees">the wild trees</a> by richard preston from when i read it for a botany class two years ago.</p>
<p>and i tagged this as M/F because god i GUESS it reads like they're on a fucking honeymoon or something, doesn't it?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>This forest is like the Monongahela, only bigger.</p>
<p>The trees are impossible giants—Minerva has to tilt her head back to see where they end, those crowns of branches stretching out to catch the sun.  These trees have a monopoly on sunlight, she thinks.  Barely anything trickles down for the shrubs and ferns, but even those are larger than the plants she remembers in West Virginia—these feathery green leaves are as wide as her palms.</p>
<p>And these trees, they’re wide, too: if Minerva stretched her arms out around one, she would only encompass maybe one-tenth of the circumference.  She knows this, because she tried it this morning at the cottage where she and Duck Newton are staying.  The bark was wet and rough beneath her palms, loose, stringy pieces of bark growing around and around and around each other until they form a wall, history pressed between each layer.  Minerva pressed her face into the trunk, closed her eyes, and breathed the tree in—let her world narrow to the texture and the smell, ancient yet new.</p>
<p>Duck took a picture.  Leo Tarkesian and Sarah Drake have voted it top five best images ever sent in the Chosen Club Group Chat.</p>
<p>“Duck Newton,” Minerva says.</p>
<p>He stops, a few paces up the path, and turns to look at her.  Duck hasn’t changed much, in the two years since Minerva arrived on Earth: he’s the same steady shape, strong arms and shoulders, dark chair cropped close beneath his wide-brimmed hat.  But there’s something lighter about him, now.  His skin is clearer, even as he grows wrinkles and laughter lines.  He’s been sleeping easier—fewer nightmares.</p>
<p>He looks at her—and it’s a few paces to touch him, isn’t it, not a few galaxies.  It’s the space between two trees, it’s the space between one year’s worth of bark and the next.  Minerva has never stopped crossing distances but her steps are shorter, now, her destinations smaller.  She loves this contracted world, this dappled sunlight.  She loves sharing it with him.</p>
<p>“Hey, Minerva,” Duck says.  “What’s up?”</p>
<p>It takes her a moment to remember her question.  “Are these trees the biggest trees in the world?”</p>
<p>Duck considers this, as he considers everything.  Weighs the words in his calloused hands.</p>
<p>“They could be,” he says.  “Or, not the biggest around—that’s the sequoias, they live further south—but the tallest.  Redwoods just keep going up and up for hundreds of years, if nobody bothers them.  There are people who devote their lives to finding the tallest ones, though.  Just hiking and measuring.”</p>
<p>It seems like an honorable profession, Minerva thinks.  Like a tree survey, only looking for glory: quantifying giants.</p>
<p>“Where is the tallest one, then?” she asks.</p>
<p>Duck shrugs.  He starts walking again, his strides slow and steady, and she jogs a bit to catch up, then matches his pace.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to say,” Duck says.  “People keep claiming to find it, but who’s gonna corroborate that—like, if three other people have to do the same insane two-day hike to get to the same obscure clearing to attempt to measure a shadow against the sun?  Never gonna happen.”</p>
<p>“Is that not sad?  To never truly know?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think so.”  The path winds up around a hill, then forks into two.  Duck looks from one to the other.  A few paces up on the left, there is an old, moss-covered stump, nearly as tall as Minerva, cracked and rotting but with a new sapling sprouting up from the top.  Duck takes that path, and Minerva follows him.</p>
<p>“Maybe one tree is taller,” he says, after another minute.  “Or one is older, or one is wider.  But it doesn’t matter to them.  They’re all here, growing.  They’re all making leaves for the bugs and bark for the endophytes and who knows what other tiny species we haven’t found yet.  Redwoods are like houses for civilizations, did you know that?  There’s a whole branch of ecology, just for studying communities of bacteria that live up there.”</p>
<p>“Branch of ecology,” Minerva echoes.  “Good one, Duck Newton.”</p>
<p>He chuckles.  “It was unintentional.”</p>
<p>Minerva keeps thinking about it, as the path twists and rises and arrives, finally, at a pond carved out of the landscape, like a giant sat down here and, from her imprint, water rushed in and lilies grew.  The redwoods circle the water, guarding quietly.  Birds chatter somewhere in the distance, branches sway gently with the breeze.  A sapling at the edge of the water is just starting to grow buds, pinkish-red, preparing for spring.</p>
<p>“The trees don’t care who is tallest,” Minerva says.</p>
<p>Duck looks at her.</p>
<p>She nods, and says it again.  “They do not care who is tallest, or widest, or oldest.  We have much to learn from them.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Minerva,” Duck says.  “We have the best job in the world, y’know?  Our teachers are chill and huge and they never die.”</p>
<p>He’s right, as he always is.</p>
<p>They stand there for a while, listening to the water and the birds and the wind, and then they go back into town for breakfast.</p>
<p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>talk trees to me: <a href="https://twitter.com/owlinaminor">twitter</a> / <a href="https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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